Single Open Jaw
A simple example for a single open jaw would be a combination of flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles with a return flight from San Diego to Frankfurt. It makes good sense to combine these air flights in one ticket. Otherwise you would have to travel on the road or railroad from San Diego to Los Angeles to get your return flight to Frankfurt, or you would have to buy two separate one way tickets.
Another variant of an open jaw flight would be an arrangement where you travel from Frankfurt to Los Angeles, and return from Los Angeles to Munich.

Double Open Jaw
This would be a combination of a flight from Hamburg to Los Angeles and a return flight from San Diego to Munich. You could buy two one way tickets, but you can save a bundle if you manage to combine these two flights into one ticket as an double open jaw flight.

How to Book an Open Jaw Flight?
Many flight booking engines have a link you can use to search for an open jaw flight, or a multi stop flight. If you click on such a button, you get a new input form, where you can ask for a flight from A to B plus from C to D, maybe even afterwards from E to F. You enter your travel plans, and with good luck, you get a reasonable offer. Reasonable is the half price of a return ticket from A to B, plus the half price of a return flight from C to D. If you find an airline is flying both routes, and B is in the same country as C, while A is in the same country as D, you should be able to get a ticket for this flight. But if you do not get a reasonable for this flight on a booking engine, you still have the chance to call your travel agent and ask him to look. The rules about open jaw flights are included in the rules text of the airfare.

Ask Your Travel Agent
Booking engines often sometimes unable to understand all fare rules, and if the engine does not understand the rule, it does not offer the fare. But a human travel agent should understand the rules text and thus be able to price an open jaw flight, even if each air segment of the journey is flown with another airline. This is often possible, if all airlines concerned belong to a single airline alliance.
Sometimes you get a reasonable offer in the fare listing of the booking engine, but when you press the purchase button, you get an error message with a new expensive price. In this case ask again your travel agent for a price quote. Chances are a travel agent can sell you the ticket for the lower price. If the booking engine cannot find it, the open jaw flight may still be available.

Not to Ask Means Not to Get It
An open Jaw flight may even be possible, if the airports concerned are located in different countries. One example would be a flight from Germany to Kilimanjaro, with a return flight from Mombasa to Germany. Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania, Mombasa in Kenya. But in this example you can still combine these flights in a single ticket. There are offers from KLM, Ethiopian Airways and Condor of Germany.

Hidden expenses may be associated with

1. Luggage
2. Change or cancellation penalty
3. Expenses to reach the airport
4. Expenses for a hotel room needed because of early starting or late arriving flights
5. The cost of your time you spend on the road.

On top of these common expenses, some airlines charge you a fee for a credit card payment or a seat reservation. Mostly a fee for issuing the ticket is charged. This may or may not be included in the price tag of your air ticket. If you do not consider the hidden costs of your flight carefully, you may pay at the end of the day much more for your journey than necessary.

Leisure travelers often underestimate the value of their time, because they are not paid for their time, and family members drop them at the airport and pick them up again, without charging for time. But your time, and the time of your friends is still a valuable resource. Many successful people put even a higher value on time with their family time, than on time spent with customers or clients.
If you want to get the most for your resources spent on travel, you really need to acknowledge the value of time as part of the hidden costs of your flight. Otherwise you could end up believing that you save, while you are wasting your resources.

I am well aware that it can be a daunting task to calculate total costs of a flight, including the hidden ones. For this reason I included into the free membership area of http://www.MaxValue4Airfare.com a small script, that acts as a checklist for resources used to travel. While you fill the flight information into the form, it does the math in the background, adding the tickets price and the hidden costs of your flight. This way you get easily a meaningful price tag which is useful to compare your flight offers.

Is this the right time to book flights for Christmas? Wrong! Absolutely wrong! Now, in November, is the right time to look for flights in the Easter vacations. Best time to book flights for this Christmas was in February, March or April!

Save a bundle with early flight reservation

Booking flights early can save you a bundle, and you can secure seats for yourself and your loved ones on the best connections.
And, if you choose the right airline, you can still maintain your flexibility. Some airlines allow you to keep a reservation without issuing a ticket for many weeks. Air France for example demands a ticket number and payment only three months before departure. Many Airlines from the Gulf region are even more liberal.
Using this system, you have nothing to lose. You buy the ticket as soon as you can make a firm commitment. The worst what can happen to you at ticketing time is, that you have cancel the old reservation and look again. Then you are in the same position as someone who looks at that time for a flight.

Most travel agents demand immediate ticketing and payment

You will ask me: “What are you telling me here? If I go to any website or travel agency to book a flight, they ask me for money right away, and I get a ticket on the spot.”
And you are right. Most travel agents keep quiet about these opportunities for several reasons:

1. The travel agent must manage those reservations without a ticket manually. Often it takes one or two days until the airline sends a note with the latest possible ticketing date. The agent must have an eye of these reservations and inform you of any messages of the airline. That is work and costs money.
2. The general rule is: The price is only guaranteed if a ticket is issued. If the fuel surcharge is going up, or if the airline decides to change the price or schedule, it’s up to you to change your plans. And no travel agent likes to pick the phone to tell you, that the flight he offered you, is no longer available, or costs now much more.
3. In most booking engines the whole process of looking for free seats, pricing, collecting the payment and issuing a ticket is fully automated. Everything else would be way too expensive for a travel agency competing solely on the price.
4. Last but not least: If you paid the flight and have the ticket, you cannot change your mind and buy somewhere else.

The bottom line is: Travel agencies ask for immediate ticketing and payment. For the customer this is a pity. Many people would be much better off paying a higher fee to the travel agent and have him do the work which can be the difference of paying 800 or 1500 Euro for a flight from Frankfurt to Nairobi or Douala in the holiday season.

Sweet spot for our customers

To take care of this problem, we have done something sweet for you. We put up a booking engine which just makes a reservation for you, without issuing a ticket. Our fees are obviously a bit higher that the fees the 100% automated discount agencies offer. But I think you will like the idea to spend 20 Euros to save 200 Euros. (This is a hypothetical example. It is not possible to calculate today, what you would pay for a flight if you had made a reservation in February. But not hypothetical is the fact, that almost any travel agent who has access to the Sabre(TM) or Amadeus(TM) reservation system, uses that technique for his own travel needs.)
The engine offers fares which are available for sale in Germany. But you can book flights starting and ending in almost every country.

This engine is hidden at

http://engine.bestprice.travel
As you can cancel any reservation from this engine before a ticket is issued without a fee, we have taken the complete risk on our side.

Yours
for a better travel experience

 

PS:
Paying € 20 to save € 200 sums up to a saving of 180 Euro.

Four reasons:

1. With Bestprice.Travel you can create a reservation without immediately ordering a ticket. This they you can be sure that a flight will be available when you propose an appointment to your contact. And if you agree to a different appointment, you can change and cancel your reservation at no cost, as long as no ticket is issued.
2. You can book flights in all countries and between all countries.
3. We check the reservation before we issue a ticket. If we find an lower priced offer for the same flight, we show you that option before booking.
4. You have one person taking care of your needs around the flight, be it changes, seat reservations, special meals, rail and fly offers etc.

This way you get the best of two worlds: immediate reservation, and professional service taking care of everything around your flight.

Same Plane, Different Prices
But in one aspect, there is no change: In the same plane, especially in economy class, there are on each flights passengers who paid for their ticket twice as much as the passenger with the cheapest flight ticket. So one and the same flight can be an expensive flight, and at the same time a cheap flight. The question is now: We just want to leave the expensive part of the plane to somebody else! What do we need to do so that these flights are for us cheap flights?

Time is the Key to Inexpensive Airfares
The main keyword to get the a cheap airfare is “time”. It is the time, when you make your flight reservation, the time when you buy your ticket, and the time, when you fly. If you buy your ticket too early, you may miss some specials. Airlines bring their specials into the market, when they have an idea of the market conditions. For example, now. September 2009, airlines publish their specials for the coming winter, the travel season after Christmas. It would have been a mistake to buy a ticket for a flight coming February already this May. This is especially true if you travel in low season months. On the other hand it is much easier to get cheap flights for February or November, than for August or December.
On the other hand, If you know you need to travel from December 22 to January 5, it is better to get a reservation as early as possible. This means in late January of beginning of February. For a cheap air ticket in the summer vacations you may start to look in November. But if possible, keep your reservation open, and do not buy a ticket until January. In January, after the end of the Christmas travel season, specials for the summer vacations are usually published.

Minimum Stay and Maximum Stay Important for Ticket Prices
The other important time feature of cheap flights is a stay over a weekend in your destination country, and the maximum time your ticket is valid.

Ethnic Fares
Air France and KLM demand for their Visit Friends and Family offers even a minimum stay of 2 weeks. Other airlines have similiar programs. Since it is in Europe problematic to use the nationality of passengers to decide who can get these fares, other features are used to define this market segment. The fares of theses programs are sometimes only slightly lower than normal fares, but sometimes there may be stark price difference. And, what is equally important, the fare rules are more relaxed. Generally, cheap air tickets are not refundable, and often no change of the ticket is possible in any way. Ethnic fares target families who have roots in two or more countries, especially in Europe and in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
Ethnic fares and their cousins, like fares for military service people, are not offered in booking engines.

Cheap is not Enough
This brings another consideration on the table: We are not really looking for cheap flights. We want flights with well maintained planes, with an airline which will be still around when we want to travel home again, on a way as direct as possible, and that for a low price.

Add Hidden Cost into the Picture
You need to add to the ticket price some hidden cost, which are often forgotten. We have developed Maximum Value for Your Airfare to help you find and evaluate these less than obvious expenses. It includes a checklist, asking the right questions, and while you fill your answers in, it does the math for you. This way it is a real timesaver in itself.

Change of Flight Schedule before a Ticket is Issued

As far as I know, no airline imposes a penalty for a change of a flight schedule or a cancellation of a reservation before a ticket is issued. Only in case of a so called “no show”, which means the reservation was not canceled before the flights departure, some airlines charge a penalty to the travel agent, who kept that reservation. We at BestPrice.Travel certainly never charge a penalty before a ticket is issued)

Change of Flight Schedule after a Ticket is Issued

More complicated is the change of a flight reservation if a ticket is already issued. It is rarely possible to change the names passenger in a flight ticket, or even in a reservation before a ticket is issued. In the era of paper tickets this was a security measure to make a flight ticket less attractive to thiefs. And it is a safeguard that prevents a travel agency to block seats on cheap fares in order to sell them later. A name change is a “no, no”. This makes it all important to check the spelling of the names in the reservation before you order your ticket or press the “buy now” button in the booking engine. After the ticket is issued, you may have a chance to cancel it the same day for a small fee. But the next day, full penalties apply without discussion.

The rules used to change an air ticket differentiate between a change before the start of the journey, and a change after you used the first part of your ticket.

Change of the Retur Flight after Reaching Your Flight Destination

A change of the return flight after you reached your destination is straightforward: You change the flight schedule, calculate the fare as if you had this new schedule. You divide the newly calculated fare and the original ticket price by half. Add both together, and you have the new price. Deduct the already paid amount from that new price, and add the change penalty. The result is the bill you get if you a change an air ticket for the return ticket only.

Rerouting

If you want to change not only the time of the return flight, but also the destination of the return flight (e.e. because you started from Frankfurt, but now on the new date for return travel a seat is only available to Munich) you have to consider two provisions in the fare rules: Is an open jaw flight allowed, and is rerouting allowed? if both is allowed, the procedure is the same as in the case of a mere time change. If one of the two, rerouting or open jaw is not allowed in the original fare rules, you may just be not able to change your ticket in that way.
The change of the return flight according to this system is only possible. if you keep the minimum stay provision included in many fare rules.

Change before the Start of the Journey

If you want to change a flight ticket before the start of the journey, the rule of the thump is: The new price is determined at current rates, taking account all rules including advance purchase provisions. The change fee is added to the new price, and the price already paid is applied to the new ticket. You are billed the remaining amount after applying the old fare.

Example:

You booked a flight from Frankfurt to Singapore, and the ticket had to be issued at least 60 days before departure. Now, one week before the originally booked flight, you want to change your air ticket. In this case, you cannot use the old fare any more, even if you want to change the return flight, only. To change an air ticket in such a case, you have to buy a new ticket, and you use the old ticket minus the change penalty to pay for the new ticket. If you want to change the return flight only, you may consider in this case to wait with the change until you reached Singapore. This may be cheaper, but you may run the risk, that after reaching Singapore your desired return flight may be no longer available, because somebody else may have taken the seat.

Changes between the time the ticket is issued and the start of the journey will be considered as a change of an air ticket only if it is not allowed to cancel the ticket, or if the penalty to change an air ticket is lower than the cancellation penalty. In special fares distributed by wholesalers a change before the start of the journey is only in very rare cases allowed. This makes the penalty for cancelling a flight ticket even more important, because you be very well forced to pay that penalty not only in case you stay at home, but also if you need to postpone your flight, or you need to fly a few days earlier.

No Show

This article does not relate to cases, in which somebody does not show up for his flight on time, comes without a needed visa, or forgets his passport. These no show case are governed by a different set of rules outside of the scope of this article

It is now a little over 2 months, that IATA stopped issuing air tickets on paper. Now under IATA rules only electronic tickets are allowed.

Deutsche Bahn as feeder for long distance flights

In Germany the railway company Deutsche Bahn is an importent feeder for international aund intercontinental flights. Many airlines have cooperation agreements with Deutsche Bahn, the German railway companies and publish fares which include a railway feeder to the airport. For the passenger the rail and fly fares have the additional benefit that he receives a ticket which reaches as close as the next railway station to his home.

Incompatible reservation systems

Since the reservation system of Deutsche Bahn is not compatible, and will not be compatible with the global GDSes and the internal airline reservation systems, for these fares, combining rail and air segments, paper tickets were used. This is now no longer possible, at least not without considerable extra cost and cost and hassle.

There are three different types of rail and fly tickets:

Different solutions are coming up

1. Some airlines issue code share flight numbers for certain rail connections, espiaclly from from Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Cologne to Frankfurt. In this case, you receive a normal flight ticket for the train ride, which is valid only in one specified train relation, date and time. You can use your electronic flight ticket, but only in that very train, for which the ticket is issued.(Very much like the flight ticket is only valid for a specific flight, and you cannot show up with your ticket one day earlier and expect to fly.)
2. The classic rail and fly offer relates to a ticket, valid from any railway station in Germany to the airport, from which your flight starts. Here there is no way to specify a train you need to use, and thus it is not possible to rely on a document which can be printed by the consumer as many times as he wishes. Otherwise several people could get a copy and use it simultaneously, and there would be now way for the train company to know for whom the ticket was paid, and who is looking for a free ride.
   To allow anyway to combine electronic tickets with rail and fly segments we book now segments under the airline name ‘Access Rail’ into the flight schedule. As soon we include as such a segment into the schedule, Sabre generates a numerical code, which is transmitted as additional information with the flight reservation to the airline. As soon as an electronic flight ticket (showing the whole itinery including these ‘access rail’ segments, the airlines activates that numerical code in the reservation system of Deutsche Bahn. After that the passenger can obtain with that number conventional train tickets from any ticket sales maschine. This ticket, together with the electronic flight ticket, allows him to use almost all trains of Deutsche Bahn to the airport. Some special trains like ‘ICE Sprinter’ and night trains with sleeping facilities need an extra paid seat reservation and an supplemental payment.
3. Some airlines which do not use the global reservation systems made their private arrangements with the train companies. In this case you will receive special instruction how to use the train with the confirmation code of the airline or as part of the travel documents for your tour package.

Air and rail segments need to be booked together

In all these three cases the rail and fly segments must be ordered together with the flight tickets. After the air ticket is issued, it is mostly impossible, or at least expensive, to add a railway connection to the airport.

For all flights which you booked with us, we can provide an add on ticket for German railways from anywhere in Germany to your airport. These tickets are only valid in connection of a flight ticket, and the price is roughly 59 Euro for one way, or 110 Euro for a round trip.

If you are looking for a travel arrangement combining air segments with rail segments, we are happy to help you.

• the standard reservation systems for charter airlines are not really suitable for internet bookings
• many offers for Condor flights are not available in Sabre, our preferred reservation system for scheduled flights
• the prices offered on Condors Website are sometimes considerably lower then the prices found in the reservation systems for travel agents.

There are several aspects which determine the fares charged on the respective booking platforms for Condor flights.
On the airline web sites reservation and ticketing can automated almost fully, including the payment with a credit card. The automation is here even higher than at a self service filling station for car fuel.
With the global distribution systems – the traditional systems for scheduled flights – the same degree of automation is possible. The global distribution systems (GDS) charge a flat fee for all Condor flights booked with the help of their tools. And especially for cheap fare this can be a substantial amount. The advantage of booking through GDS is that the travel agent is able to add some service, like advance reservation without immediate ticketing, round trips with several stops etc. But he has to charge for this service his own fee.
The third system, which makes Condor flights available, are conceived for selling leisure travel packages. In these systems, both, automation and flexibility are low. Here it can be already difficult to buy an open jaw flight. And with the reservation itself carries immediately high cancellation or change fees.

Just about the time when I dropped leisure travel system from our websites I talked to Condor. I don’t even remember for what reason. But they made me an offer I could not decline:

They told me I can offer Condor flights through their fully automated system at the prices identical with their website – in fact the booking engine is a clone of the engine at their website – and they would pay me for supporting the customers in matters like sports equipment, seat reservations, flights with babies etc.

The basic deal is: You book your Condor flight through BestPrice.Travel Lounge. You pay the same price as available on the Condor website and you get our personal support as needed to get the flight perfectly organized. You won’t pay for that extra service around your Condor flights , because the airline will pay for it.

To take advantage of this offer, go to
http://lounge.bestprice.travel/bookcondor.php

How can I use a stopover? 
If you have a schedule with two appointments, and you find an airline who serves the flight destination which is farer away from your starting point, you can combine both points into one itinery. This carries sometimes a modest extra fee, ore the core fare remains unchanged. Only the tax charged will be probably a bit higher. But this is it. So organizing your trip with a stopover can save you a lot of money.

What if there is no suitable flight connecting the places I need to visit?
Integrating different flights for a reasonable price into one ticket requires in almost any cases that  the long distance flights are coming from one airline, or at least from one airline alliance. A feeder or an add on flight can come in some cases from another airline. So the stopover point usually needs to be a hub for the airline you use.
If you want to connect two destinations, which are both small airports without a hub function, stopover will not work. An example would be a trip from Frankfurt lets say to Medan and Surabaya in Indonesia. There is not way to include the way from Medan to Surabaya into a Ticket  from Frankfurt to Surabaya.
In such a case you need to combine an open jaw flight from Frankfurt to Medan and back from Surabaya to Frankfurt with an one way flight from Medan to Surabaya. This is possible without a problem, because the fact that you want to leave the airport in Medan and spend some time in that town means anyway that you need to check out, pick up your luggage and check in again. And, obviously, after a stopover break it is anyway your business to be back on time for the ongoing flight. The only drawback is that the price of an open jaw flight combined with an one way flight is probably higher than the price  of a stopover flight would be, if it were available.
It is generally not possible to book a stopover flight through a flight booking engine. Too many considerations are important for these itineries. But if you need to organize a trip which possibly could become a stopover flight, we are happy to assist you with our TailorMade Travelplan.

Luggage pitfall:
Sometimes you do not get the same luggage allowance for the on way flight, as you get for the long haul. This is especially true if you travel from the United States to Europe, or if you travel el from  Europe to South America. In these cases for the airlines the transatlantic flights the piece concept, meaning that you can carry in economy class 2 boxes with 23 kg each. But inside Europe, and inside South America, the airlines often allow only 20 kgs luggage. You have to check this, if you combine an open jaw flight with an one way flight. But I suggest that you have also an eye on the luggage permits if you book a stopover flight.